


for want of a screw

by Dresupi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Companionable Snark, Crack, Darcy Lewis-centric, F/M, First Dates, Flirting, Innuendo, Magic, Mischief, Misread the Instructions, Snark, impromptu date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 13:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14190477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dresupi/pseuds/Dresupi
Summary: Who knew misreading IKEA instructions could go so horribly wrong?  Darcy is pretty sure that misplacing a few screws shouldn’t have resulted in ascrew-up of this magnitude.  But then again, she is living in the same building as the God of Mischief, so maybe it’s just par for the course?In which, no screwing happens, but screws happen.





	for want of a screw

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2. 
> 
> Yeah, yeah, I know. But here I am.

Okay, so tossing the box before she had finished reading the instructions had been mistake numero uno. 

Darcy wasn't going to split hairs on that one. She knew better. Her father had always taught her to ‘read twice, assemble  _ once _ ’ when it came to Ikea furniture.  

But she hadn't really thought it would matter in this case. It was a bookshelf for cripes sake. There was only one way to put them together, and she'd done this at least a dozen times in her life. 

How was  _ she _ supposed to know that there were screws taped to the inside of the box?

What kind of monster did something like that? 

But that was in the past... which led her to mistake numero dos. 

She went searching for replacement screws elsewhere in the complex.  

She should have gone down to the lab and asked Tony, but she didn't want him to know she was still shopping at Ikea. 

Tony, for whatever reason, hated the store.  She wasn’t sure if it was the DIY vibe, the warehouse experience, or the meatballs that he hated more, but Tony was like the Grinch when it came to Ikea. In that, he sat there in his tower  _ hating _ it.

And so, she ventured directly across the hall and knocked on Thor’s door, only to come face to face with her crush du jour. 

Du jour? More like… du always. What was the French word for always? Who could think when they were in the presence of absolute perfection anyway?  

“How can I help you, Ms. Lewis?” Loki asked, his voice dripping with sex and making Darcy think twice about her ‘no super-people’ policy on dating. He had this smug smirk on his face like he knew  _ exactly _ what he could do for her. 

And there were those third thoughts already. Yikes.

She took a deep breath, ready to  _ not _ make an idiot of herself for once.  

“I need a screw,” she said bluntly, and watched Loki’s face go blank with surprise. “Oh  _ god _ …”  

He recovered quickly enough, damn him. “ _ ‘Oh, god _ ’ already? I haven’t even begun to screw you.”  

Her face went bright red and his smirk deepened into a full-on grin. “Yeah, no… I need  _ screws _ , multiple. And of the metallic, furniture-fixy-kind. Not the…” she trailed off.  “Not the… kind you thought I meant, but I definitely  _ didn’t _ mean.”

“What is it you Midgardians call that sort of verbal faux pas? A Freudian slip?”  

“How do you even  _ know _ that?”  

He snorted. “I know how to read, believe it or not. And while I don’t necessarily agree with Dr. Freud, I find that particular figure of speech to be apropos in this situation.”  

“Do you have any screws or not, Freeze-Pop?”  

“I’m sure we have some  _ somewhere _ …” He stepped to the side to allow her entrance. Darcy entered, and held her head up high as they began their search for screws.

* * *

 

Accepting screws from the God of Mischief was technically still part of mistake numero dos, but she was willing to make it into its very own mistake, given what happened. Accepting anything from the O.G Trickster was a mistake and that went pretty much without saying. 

Darcy didn’t really have time to say it, not now that she was trapped out in the hall outside her apartment with what could only be described as a bookshelf monster now in the process of destroying her apartment.  

From the very second she’d tightened the last of the borrowed screws into the shelf, she knew something was wrong. And that feeling was compounded when the bookshelf tried to bite her.  

Yep.  It pressed its very tiptop down to the first shelf and tried to bite her.

At the first thump against the door, she ran across the hall and pounded on Loki’s door. 

He answered, looking very unperplexed at her sudden reappearance.  “Ms. Lewis, I--” 

“Cut the crap, Loki. How do I make it stop?”  

“Make  _ what _ stop?” he asked. The very picture of nonchalance while the bookcase monster rammed itself into her front door.  

“You know damn well what!”  

The door creaked and wood splintered, the Ikea bookcase leapt into the hallway and seeming to look around. It spotted her and began to…  _ scoot _ violently towards her.  

She shrieked and half jumped/half climbed into Loki’s arms.  

“Can I help you, Darcy?” he asked, still very, very calm, given the particle board monstrosity that was scooting towards them.

“It’s trying to eat me!”  

“It’s very much  _ not.  _ It’s not hungry.”  

“What does it want?” she asked, climbing around until she was basically riding him piggy-back.  

Loki rolled his eyes, sighing heavily.  “It’s a bookshelf. It wants  _ books _ , of course.”  

“I’m  _ not _ letting it eat my books.”  

“I told you before, it’s not hungry. It’s not going to destroy them, it simply…  _ wants  _ to fulfill its purpose…” He walked into the hallway, closing his door and making his way to hers. All the while, Darcy clung to his back.

The bookcase began scooting after them, and by the time Loki had coaxed her down onto the sofa, it was moving back into place once more. He reached down, plucking one of her Louisa May Alcott’s from the pile on the floor and placing it gingerly on the top shelf. The shelf quieted down immediately, the only movement came from a vibration that was not unlike purring.  

Loki placed a few more volumes on the shelf and it began to calm down even more.  

“Am I going to do all the work? I hope you’re prepared to compensate me for my time.”  

Darcy was all ready to tell his insanely hot ass off for the very implication, but she didn’t get a chance to.  

“Dinner, Darcy. I’m hinting for dinner.”  

“I don’t cook.”

“I know, but you can use a phone, can you not?”  

* * *

 

Darcy already knew not to throw out an Ikea box before reading the instructions, and she also knew not to ask the God of Mischief for help if you actually wanted help.  

But she was glad she’d done both of those things, because otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent her evening eating pizza with Loki and petting her new bookshelf.  

Crazy things happen all for the want of a screw.  


End file.
